GitHub Tutorial for Beginners

About this Certification Course

This GitHub tutorial provides basic and advanced concepts of Git and GitHub for beginners. Git is a distributed version control system developed to manage projects with high speed and efficiency. The version control system helps us monitor and work together with the team members at the same workplace. Whereas GitHub helps make tools to integrate with Git.

This tutorial is designed to help you understand distributed version control Git as well as GitHub

Version Control

Software that keeps track of the changes made to the file over time so you can recall the versions later is known as a Version Control System. It is a collection of software tools helping to manage changes in a source code and allowing you to collaborate and work with other programmers. Without the help of version control, it would not have been possible to track the project's development. It is mostly unsafe not to use VCS in software development as VCS provides backup for uncertainty. There are three types of version control systems: localized VCS, centralized VCS, and Distributed VCS. 

The Local VCS has a simple database that keeps all the changes made to the file under revision control; that is, it keeps local copies of the file. The localized VCS failed to collaborate with other developers on other systems; hence Centralized VCS was developed to deal with this failure. With the Centralized VCS, everyone has information on the changes and the contributions others made in the project. Also, the administrators have control over other developers. Both the Localized and Centralized VCS have the same drawback of single-point failure. The Distributed VCS (DVCS) does not depend on the central server to store all the versions of the project file. It allows automatic management branching and merging, speeding up most operations except pulling and pushing. The DVCS enhances the ability to work offline and doesn't rely on backups on a single location. The DVCS uses a peer-to-peer architecture based on a client-to-server approach emerging with the concept that everyone has their own repository. In any case, if the server fails and the other systems are collaborating through it, then the server can restore any of the client repositories. Git uses DVCS.

Git 

Git is an open-source distributed version control system designed for handling minor or major projects with high speed and efficiency. Git aims to coordinate the work amongst the developers. Git is the foundation and can be used with services like GitLab and GitHub but can be used privately and publicly so that it can be used without using Git Services. The version Control system Applications are used to keep track of the changes that are made in the project. Then, we can push those changes to a repository so that other developers can pull the changes made from the repository and continue to work with the changes added to the project file. Git can handle the situation when the number of users increases. Moreover, the changes are stored in the local repository and can be pushed to a remote repository if it is necessary; hence it is scalable and distributed. Git maintains a clear history of the project. Thus, Git saves time, helps undo the mistakes, can be worked offline, and can track the changes. Also, Git is not a programming language. Hence, a basic understanding of window commands is the only prerequisite.

GitHub

GitHub is a platform where you can host your source code. It uses a centralized version control system. GitHub requires Git, but Git doesn't require GitHub. Hence offers the functionality of both DVCS and SCM (source code management). It has collaboration features such as task management, bug tracking, and feature requests for every project. It is a platform where the programmers/developers and designers collaborate, contribute and fix bugs together. It is a hosting platform supporting various programming languages and has plenty of open source projects.

GitHub is so popular amongst the developers and coders because it helps to avoid all the confusion, and it becomes easy to work on the same code providing a web-based graphical interface.

It is easy to contribute to open source projects, allows your work to get in front of the public, and helps to track the changes made to the code across versions.

Git vs GitHub

• Git is a tool that allows creating a local repository, whereas GitHub is a central repository. Git and GitHub are different from each other. Git is a version control tool allowing you to perform all kinds of operations like fetching the data from the central server or pushing the data to it. While GitHub is a code hosting platform for version control collaboration. GitHub allows you to host a central repository in a remote server. 
• Git is excellent software. In case you want to work on a project with a large team, all the members of the team can work together, but each one will have different versions of the same project. If the changes are made on the machine and those changes are sent to the collaborations, and also want the changes to appear in the machines project directory. Being on the same page helps to avoid conflict with teammates.

GitHub is a Web-based Git version control system repository hosting service. It is a place for developers where you can store the projects and get connected with like-minded people after the creation of the GitHub account. The accounts come with abundant storage space where the repositories are stored and build a profile for value. By default, the repositories are set to public but can be made private as well.